Jack Saturday

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations 241-243

My job sucks!!!Anyone else have a shitty ass job? I've been sitting in one room for 11 hours now, and I got a 5 min piss break about halfway through. My bosses suck, I work more in ONE DAY than those assholes work in two weeks.

And yes.. be thankful i have a job right...but still, yall try sitting in a chair for 11 hours and not getting to leave but once for 5 min... Most days, i get to leave for pissing and 10 min lunch break, but still, working 12 hour days sucks balls. kk.. done venting..Jeenis

July 30, 2008

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Despite the dysfunctionality of the work ethic it continues to be promoted and praised, accepted and acquiesced to. It is one of the least challenged aspects of industrial culture. Yet it is based on myths and fallacies which provide legitimacy for gross social inequalities. If we are to protect the planet and our social health we need to find new ways of judging and valuing each other which are not work and income dependent.Sharon Beder,The Promotion of a Secular Work Ethic

The evidence shows that there is one segment of the population that has more money than it can spend and another that has less than it needs. Obviously the guaranteed annual wage must be supported by people who have more than they can use. What is the point of amassing an enormous personal fortune when you can't take it with you?

Treason! You're saying a man [sic] shouldn't be able to save and provide for the future comfort of his children and grandchildren! That's the whole basis of our incentive system.

But should it be? Does an athlete pass on his long-distance track medals for his [sic] son to wear? Does the Nobel Prize also go to the grandchildren of the recipients? More to the point, if the country provides basic security - free education, medical care, and a guaranteed wage - to all as a right, what is the point of leaving large sums behind to grandchildren yet unborn?

But you're killing incentive! What will men [sic] work for if they aren't given the opportunity to accumulate a substantial share of this world's goods?

Yes: the New Democracy would kill incentive in misers. If a man's [sic] goal in life is purely and simply the hoarding of large sums of money, there'll be less incentive for him to do that. But it is my observation that, after a certain economic level is reached, the accumulation of money is not the chief incentive for most people. It never has been for those outside the business world, unless they are poor - the artists, teachers, writers, architects, yes, and to a large extent the doctors and engineers and others. (The very businessmen who keep talking about incentives are also quoted in the popular magazine profiles as saying they don't really care about the money; they work for the fun of it.) Money is certainly a status symbol; of that we are aware. As long as it is the criterion by which achievement is judged it will continue to be. But what is wrong with seeking better status symbols?

These arguments apply at the other end of the economic scale. Will a guaranteed annual wage kill incentive among the poor? If a man is given a certain amount of security, won't he quit working? Exactly the same contention could be made about the sons of the wealthy who are left large fortunes. Yet the evidence suggests that, given economic freedom, people will generally choose to do that which interests them most. It is up to society to see that these interests are widened and that too requires investment.Pierre Berton,The Smug Minority, pp. 117-118

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations 236-240

I AM DREADING GOING TO WORK TOMORROW...I TOOK THE DAY OFF TODAY. I AM CRYING INSIDE...THAT IS HOW MUCH I FEEL ABOUT IT. THIS FEELING HAS BEEN INCREASING RAPIDLY EACH DAY FOR THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS.Diary of a Shy Black womanMonday, July 14, 2008

Did I mention, I hate my job?!Okay, it is more a very strong dislike towards my crazy, psycho, control-freakish, I-don't-do-anything-all-day-long-but-expect-you-to-drop-everything-for-me boss.TammyTuesday, July 15, 2008

Life sucked, BAD! Went through some very hard times that I might post about one day but not now. God pulled me, dragged me, carried me, threw me, kicked my butt, did it all to get me past the bad times. One of the things he did (and I asked him for it) was to help me financially. He did, he put three choices in front of me. I picked one. I get paid more money than I have ever. I have gotten some great raises. I make good money. Thank you God for that blessing. The problem is that I don’t like my job, and God did what I asked Him to do.I realized what an ungrateful piece of poo I am. God answered my prayer, he has blessed me more now than before I got my divorce. I’m sorry God for not appreciating what you have done for me. Can one of my three readers help me out and tell me if I am wrong for hating my job? Have any of you ever had to ask forgiveness of that?jalackJuly 14, 2008-07-15

I hate my job so much.My only fear is that if/when I quit my job and get a new one, I'll hate that one too.This job has completely shot my confidence in what I do.Ngracengrace07/07/2008

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians.Gautama Buddha

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotation 235

In fact, we come to associate having to expend effort and do things with our work, and associate relaxing and not doing anything with leisure time. So, because many of us don't like our jobs, we tend to associate having to do things with being unhappy, while happiness, as far as we ever know it, means... not doing anything. We never act for ourselves, because we spend our whole days acting for other people, and we think that acting and working hard always leads to unhappiness; our idea of happiness is not having to act, being on permanent vacation. And this is ultimately why so many of us are so unhappy: because happiness is not doing nothing, happiness is acting creatively, doing things, working hard on things you care about. Happiness is becoming an excellent long-distance runner, falling in love, cooking an original recipe for people you care about, building a bookshelf, writing a song. There is no happiness to be found in merely lying on a couch--happiness is something that we must pursue. We are not unhappy because we have to do things, we are unhappy because all the things we do are things we don't care about. And because our jobs exhaust us and mislead us about what we want, they are the source of much of our unhappiness.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Question Everything

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations 231-233

The demand that the worth of women's wage labor be recognized puts forth a narrow conception of what is valuable, and obsures the basic worthlessness of so much of our time spent on the job. It is not just that so many workers don't get paid enough, but that the imperative of making money in boring, tedious jobs robs us of the time and energy to do things which are truly valuable to ourselves and others. Nevertheless, demands for comparable worth may prove to be a useful short-term strategy to increase wages for women and minority workers who are victims of wage discrimination.Helen Highwater,“Compared to What?”, Processed World magazine

Scholars rarely differentiate between work as what one does for merematerial survival and the romantic (and highly privileged) concept of work as a means of pursuing what one loves. Most scholars tend to ignore the disparity between the number of people who work for survival and those who work for fulfillment…

Professors and graduate students often refuse to acknowledge the privilege they have and the value of the cultural assets they hold. They do not realize how rare it is to get paid doing something one loves, how rare it is to be able to pursue one's interests on the job, not off it. The idea of attaining higher meaning in everyday life is just not one that averageworkers have either the time or energy to dwell upon. They have neither the monetary resources nor the cultural capital necessary to pursue a "higher" interest. Their financial and mental resources are spent on survival.Kim Nicolini,"Work Without a Face " ,Bad Subjects magazine (# 32)

Justice dictates that we should not continue to penalise and stigmatise people who cannot find secure, living-wage work, since there is not enough of it to go around. There is plenty of good work that needs doing -- parenting our young, protecting and restoring the environment, providing companionship for the elderly, for example -- but a fixation on the private sector's bottom line prevents society from paying people adequately to do this needed work. And as the cliche now has it, many of us are overworked while others have no paying job at all. The message here seems clear: we must begin seriously to examine how to implement other mechanisms for allocating work and distributing income. These include a shorter work week, job sharing, earlier retirement, 'sabbatical leaves' and innovative mixes of these ideas. But these ways of sharing work can be viewed as only one component in a strategy to adapt to growing structural unemployment. And no strategy is likely to be successful in equitably addressing the new problems of income distribution without the introduction of some form of adequate and secure guaranteed basic income.Sally Lerner,Ensuring Basic Economic Security

About

About Me

Come by to Jack Saturday once a week for some bracing anti-wage-slavery quotations, it'll be nice to have you over to the place. I'll be including some of the wake of my personal journey through freedom from the job in this third emancipatory phase of history, the phase of liberation of wage-slaves through a Guaranteed Livable Income.
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Come to Extraordinary Discourse for my podcast, wider ranging. It would be a joy to spend an hour a week with you.